OFFIE MAG

3 times that football songs weren’t even that cringey…

For our weekly clickbait article, we’re this time harnessing some of the clickable energy surrounding the incoming international football summer championships – also known as the World Cup.

Look at us, acting all cool like we don’t care. But of course we do. If you’re into football you’re into this, as a section of the summer is filled with non-stop goals and stuff. The excitement of the nation every time that a major tournament comes around is attempted to be captured and then sold back to the people through the medium of song, as K-list celebs and shit bands looking to build promo for their difficult second album turn to sampling football commentary and crowd noise for a song that has a shelf-life no longer than the group stages.

But every now and then, artists get it right. Whether it’s through a perfect taste of popular culture of the time or via a rap verse from one of the coolest footballer’s who ever lived, these are three football songs that are actually alright.

You’ve got to hold and giveBut do it at the right timeYou can be slow or fastBut you must get to the line

They’ll always hit you and hurt youDefend and attackThere’s only one way to beat themGet round the back

Catch me if you can‘Cause I’m the England manAnd what you’re looking atIs the master plan

We ain’t no hooligansThis ain’t a football songThree lions on my chestI know we can’t go wrong.

The summer of 1996 was one that many millennials must wish they were out of nappies for.

Pop music was actually kinda good, drinking in a pub wasn’t only an option within the first fortnight of your student loan dropping, this bloke called Tony Blair was about to solve all your problems and England were hosting a major tournament.

Baddiel and Skinner somehow harmlessly captured the essence of whatever ‘lad culture’ ever was or is, and put it into practice throughout the summer with a special series of Fanstasy Football League. It was a series in which they just sat on a sofa and chatted shit, just like YOU, Steve and Martin from Watford.

The soundtrack to that summer was provided by them, too, with the help of the Lightning Seeds and a bunch of footballers not taking themselves too seriously. They repeated the feat two years later without begging it as well.

BUCKET.

Yeah, again, this one feels like it grappled British lad and football culture in a kind of ironic way. Not only that, but it got a whole nation chanting about curry.

Keith Allen, now known as ‘Lily’s Dad,’ delivered a cult classic with this one and brought in loads of famous and future famous faces in for the video that parodied The Verve’s Bitter Sweet Symphony visuals. An outstanding effort, only bettered by 18-year-old Michael Owen’s wonder goal that summer.